He took a simple-is-best approach, keeping the main goal of high-quality inputs at the forefront. To start, he built the face plate out of thick MDF to ensure it wouldn’t flex or bounce as he mashed the buttons. To keep the electronics as simple as possible he soldered connections to actual controller PCBs (well, reproductions of controllers), breaking each out to a separate DB9 connector on the back of the case. These connectors interface with one of the three adapter cables seen to the right. This lets the controller work with NES, SNES, and an Atari 2600 system.

To pull the enclosure together [Dave] designed the rounded corner pieces and cut them out with a CNC mill. These connect with flat MDF to make up the sides. To give it that professional look he filled the joints with Bondo and sanded them smooth before painting.

Most of the time we feature hokey film footage in our Retrotechtacular series, but we think this hack is as cool today as it was fifty years ago. [Clint] wrote in to tell us about Operation Red Line. It was an experiment performed May 3rd and 4th, 1963, which means the 50th anniversary just passed a few weeks ago. The hack involved sending data (audio in this case) over long distances using a laser. But back then you couldn’t just jump on eBay and order up the parts. The team had to hack together everything for themselves.

They built their own helium-neon laser tube, which is shown on the right. The gentlemen involved were engineers at a company called Electro-Optical System (EOS) by day, and Ham radio enthusiasts by night. With the blessing of their employer they were able to ply their hobby skills using the glass blowing and optical resources from their work to get the laser up and running. With that side of things taken care of they turned to the receiving end. Using a telescope and a photomultipler they were able to pick up the beam of light at a distance of about 119 miles. The pinnacle of their achievement was modulating audio on the transmitter, and demodulating it with the receiver.

We love the beginning of May because the final projects for college coursework start rolling into our tips line. Here’s one of the latest, it’s an automatic Master lock combination cracker which was built by [Ross Aiken] and his classmates as part of their ECE453 Embedded Microprocessor System Design class at the University of Wisconsin – Madison.

We’ve talked about the ease with which these locks can be cracked. But [Ross] points out that the resources we linked to before are flawed. To get the combination as quickly as possible the team has implemented an algorithm discussed here. Their machine uses a stepper motor to turn the dial with a big solenoid to pull on the shackle. The system is sensitive enough to detect the “sticky” spots of the lock, which are then used to narrow the number of possible combinations before brute forcing the combination. As you can see in the video after the break, the shackle moves slightly when pulled after an incorrect combination. The long vertical pin near the solenoid will pass through an optical sensor when the correct combination is found.

Do you have your own final project to show off? What are you waiting for, send us a tip about it!